“The Animated Chocolate Drop!” See the Curiosity of the Age! This Is The Biggest, Blackest, Ugliest Thing You Ever Saw. Living, Breathing, Seeing, Speaking, Chunk of 5,000 Pounds. One Sight Will Be a Joy for a Lifetime! Walk In. With this I covered the bay window on the outside, thus making it serve the double purpose of advertisement and curtain. Then, taking my stand at the door, I fell to work. A good many people were passing that way, and with my knowledge of human nature it was not hard to pick out half a dozen of the right sort for free admission. Securing these as a start for an audience, I began my outside oration on the animated chocolate drop, the mountain of flesh, the visible evolution of the protoplastic through the missing link of Darwin’s chain. I talked of the baboons of Sumatra and the Dyaks of Borneo; of the chimpanzee of Abyssinian deserts and the gorilla of the Congo—“And all this lesson to be learned for the small sum of half a dime. The lecture itself is worth the money, and the sight of the chocolate drop would be cheap at a fortune.” What my audience thought I never knew nor cared, so long as they did not mob me. It is an actual fact that over two hundred people paid a nickel a piece to see the wonder of the age—which was only old “auntie” from Smoky Row, throned on the counter and feeling as big as a box-car. After deducting expenses I divided fairly with the old woman, sending her home again in a hack, while I proceeded to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible, before the questions of rent or trespass and license should come up. It seemed a miracle that I had not been stranded on one of them. But here I was, after the briefest of business adventures, with five dollars in my pocket, and again at a loss. That evening I once more ran over the list of my available accomplishments, to see which one was most applicable, and happened to think of one which had been escaping my mind. What was to prevent my pursuing the vocation of a corn doctor? True enough, my knowledge was theoretical rather, than practical, having been gleaned from a few incidental remarks made by Professor Carter; but I thought I remembered all he had said on the subject, and was sure that anything more would be confusing. I decided to launch out the next morning and test for myself the possibilities of the profession. In the outset, I may as well premise that as a corn doctor I was a miserable failure, and after the first day’s experience never had the nerve to attempt the scheme again. I had none too much confidence in the start, and before the day’s work was done had mentally vowed that the corn doctor was the most worthless piece of mechanism ever manufactured.